Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWe enjoy laughing at The Room, but to stop there would reflect poorly on us as an audience. Something so singular and immense deserves loving attention and careful study, and that's what we find in this rich and delightful collection of essays.
-- Matthew Strohl, author of Why It's OK to Love Bad Movies, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Montana
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Let's Toss the Ball Around, by Adam Rosen
Part I: Cliché and Convention, Misapplied
1. Chris-R's Gun: The Room as an Unconscious Parody of Hollywood Film Conventions, by Carter Soles
2. Do You Understand Life? Do You? Tommy Wiseau and the Anti-Method Acting Style, by James Curnow
3. "She Can't Love Anyone": The Evil Women and Tormented Men of The Room, by Lenika Cruz
Part II: Unlocking The Room
4. Is The Room Worse than Vertigo? The Aesthetic Philosophy of "So Bad it's Good", by James MacDowell
5. Everybody Betray Me! Revenge, Reverse Revenge, and Slave Morality in The Room, by John Dyck
6. Anything for My Princess: Using Don Quixote to Bring (Some) Coherence to The Room, by Adam Rosen
7. Crypto-Wiseaulogy: Uncovering Stanley Kubrick, Jewishness, and Judaism in The Room, by Nathan Abrams
Part III: Cult and the (Class)Room
8. I Just Like to Watch You Guys: How Screenings of The Room Give People Permission to Perform, by Ellen Wright
9. The Room in the Classroom: How I Use a Bad Movie to Teach Good Filmmaking, by Ross Morin
10. For the Love of Cult, Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Build My Own Screening of The Room, by Amanda Ann Klein
Part IV: Fan Reception
11. How Can They Say This About Me? Riffing Johnny, Lisa, and Denny in Online Homebrew Commentaries of The Room, by Matt Foy
12. "Can We Please Not Talk about James Franco?": How The Disaster Artist Threatened The Room's Fanbase, by John Donegan
13. I'm Tired, I'm Wasted: The Room as a Waste of Time, by Ernest Mathijs
Part V: Constructing Tommy Wiseau
14. Oh Man, I Just Can't Figure You Out: Building the Persona of Tommy Wiseau through The Disaster Artist, by Hario Satrio Priambodho
15. I'm an American, Just Like You: The Room and American Cinema, Identity, and Masculinity, by Landon Palmer
16. To Err Is Human, to Auteur, Divine: Tommy Wiseau as Auteur, by Renee Middlemost
17. I Don't Have a Friend in the World: The Lonely Authenticity of Tommy Wiseau, by Keith Kahn-Harris
Works Cited
Index
